Twitter ends Q4 with 288 million users, revenue beats estimates

All eyes were on Twitter's user growth when the company reported its fourth quarter earnings and revenue Thursday after the bell.

Twitter says it had 288 million monthly active users by the end of Q4, a jump of 20 percent from the same quarter last year. But a closer look reveals that Twitter added just 4 million new users during Q4, continuing its sluggish growth streak.

Mobile monthly active users accounted for roughly 80 percent of all monthly active users.

As for the numbers, the social network reported a net loss of $125 million, or 20 cents per share (statement).

Non-GAAP earnings were 12 cents per share on a revenue of $479 million, a 79 percent year-over-year.

Wall Street was expecting earnings of 6 cents per share with revenue of $453.1 million.

CEO Dick Costolo said in prepared remarks:

We closed out the year with our business advancing at a great pace. Revenue growth accelerated again for the full year, and we had record quarterly profits on an adjusted EBITDA basis. In addition, the trend thus far in Q1 leads us to believe that the absolute number of net users added in Q1 will be similar to what we saw during the first three quarters of 2014.

For the current quarter, Twitter expects revenue in the range of $440 million to $450 million.

In after-hours trading, Twitter's stock was up just over 2 percent.